Our decisions and preferences are affected by how information is presented to us. How something is framed can make different features more or less front of mind and alter decision-making and behaviour. By Crawford Hollingworth.

Executives are bombarded with bestselling ideas and best practices for achieving competitive advantage, but many of these ideas and practices contradict each other. Should you aim to be big or fast? Should you create a blue ocean, be adaptive, play to win — or forget about a sustainable competitive advantage altogether?

A thought provoking article. Two elements are particularly notable: A quote from Tim Cook, CEO of Apple …: “We change every day. We changed every day when he (Steve Jobs) was here, and we’ve been changing every day since he’s not been here. But the core and the values in the core remain the same as they were in ’98, as they were in ’05, as they were in ’10. I don’t think the values should change. But everything else can change.” and within the article…

What we typically don’t consider however, is it’s not the overt messages that make or break us, it’s the covert ones, the ones we are not thinking about or aware of. Thus, most times when we find our teams and organizations resisting change, our answer as to why is staring right back at us in the mirror.

How can you convert employee engagement into competitive advantage and what trends will we see in the future? Here are five key takeaways from our sneak preview at the inaugural EdelmanENGAGE survey into engagement.